The death of customer service

The ladies in the bank now wear badges telling you to Be Kind and not do anything that might upset them in any way.

Be Kind is in big capital letters on this badge and beneath is a lot of small print explaining the well-known global problem of upset bank employees, which has reached such proportions that extreme measures are having to be taken to tackle customers from whom kindness does not flow in generous enough proportions as to prevent upset being incurred by agents of the high street banks in the course of them courageously risking all in order to speak to the likes of you and me about our banking issues.

But I couldn’t quite read the small print, for the same reason I was asking this lady to heroically put herself in jeopardy to order me a new debit card with no thought of the danger to herself.

Look, I do understand that the service ethic has been reversed so that we the customer must please the service giver. And the best way to do that is not to ask for any service.

Unfortunately, my vision is now so blurred that I cannot do any banking on my phone. I either do it on my laptop or I go into the bank and grapple with the self-service screen and the ladies standing beside it, allegedly there to help.

On this occasion I had cash to deposit and then I asked the lady hovering beside the machine – allegedly to help – if she wouldn’t mind showing me how to order a new debit card because mine was falling to bits.

‘You can do that on the app,’ she snapped. I sighed and began my tedious explanation of the worsening astigmatism in my right eye and the catastrophes that will undoubtedly unfold if I try to do banking on a mobile phone.